Group pays late fee over election filing
A Voice for Responsible Government, an independent political committee, paid a $3,000 late fee Thursday for being tardy in filing expenditure reports in the Oklahoma House District 85 race.
The organization spent $16,600 in support of the candidacy of retired...

EDMOND — Students at the University of Central Oklahoma have several new choices among the university’s 117 undergraduate majors, 85 minors and 70 graduate programs as the 2015-16 academic year begins.
The College of Fine Arts and Design has added a bachelor’s degree in arts entrepreneurship, plus five new minors...

Scholarship honors state justice
ADA — A sophomore from Holdenville, Lauren Stafford, has won the first Justice Rudolph Hargrave Centennial Legal Studies Scholarship at East Central University. Justice Hargrave began his education at ECU before completing his law degree at the University of Oklahoma. He was...

Police identify human remains found last week
Oklahoma City Police have identified the human remains found at Interstate 40 and Peebly Road last week.
The remains were positively identified as Ellaina Pechacek, who had been reported missing.
Police didn’t release any other information.
From Staff Reports

We asked our community of readers to show us why they live in and love Oklahoma. We received more than 56,000 responses via Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or NewsOK.com and plan to run an image every day. Some images may have been digitally altered by the photographer. Follow us on Instagram @News_OK to see more...

Six people died from injuries suffered on state roads Friday and Saturday, according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
James C. Gantt, 52, Ada
About 1:30 a.m Saturday, Gantt was riding a bicycle on an on ramp to State Highway 3 near Ada, when a vehicle traveling onto the on ramp collided with the bicycle,...

Tucked away in a wooded area just east of Interstate 35 with the Devon Tower looming in the distance, several American Indian tribes gathered to celebrate their culture during the Indian Hills pow wow at the Oklahoma City Pow-Wow Club.
Late into the night Saturday, a small fire was built near the center of...

ALTUS — A little more than 60 years ago, Karen Weaver lay in a hospital bed in the basement of the Jackson County hospital, suffering from measles.
The vaccine wouldn’t be available in the United States for another 10 years.
Memories of these now-preventable diseases stay fresh on Weaver’s mind.
That hospital...

Sometimes Dr. Timothy Newton wishes he had a “phone-a-friend” option.
The 32-year-old family practice physician works out of a clinic in Cherokee, a northwest Oklahoma town of about 1,600 people.
About one-fifth of the children that he sees have a mental health issue, whether it be depression, attention deficit...

Pediatric program gets $47,000 grant
The Oklahoma City Community Foundation’s wellness initiative program has presented a $47,000 grant to the University of Oklahoma pediatrics department’s community medicine unit to offer community-based initiatives to address childhood obesity. Medical...

For nearly three decades Scott L. Cruse has enjoyed working around the globe in diverse locations for the FBI.
He's investigated violent crimes on Montana's Indian reservations, strengthened FBI relations in Australia and, most recently, coordinated investigative efforts with security agencies in...

MEEKER — It was 1 a.m. and Glenn Leak was climbing into an amphibious vehicle at the newly liberated New Bilibid Prison in the Philippines.
As part of the 11th Airborne Division, Leak had helped the U.S. Army fight its way across Leyte Island and through Luzon into Manila and now, in the early morning darkness of...

In more than half the school districts in Oklahoma, parents interested in knowing the graduation rates of their child’s school or district are out of luck.
The state Department of Education is refusing to release the graduation rates for 58 percent of the state’s public school districts and charter schools,...

Wildfires have burned more than 800,000 acres of Oklahoma forest and prairie over the past 15 years, and records show the overwhelming majority of the blazes were set deliberately.
Most of those fires are started not by arsonists, but by people burning off brush or setting fires for other reasons, state forestry...

FOYIL — Artists Erin Turner and Margo Hoover move the platform of their lift with the sun.
All day they paint and chase the shade, orbiting the largest totem pole at Ed Galloway Totem Pole Park.
“It’s like our sundial,” Hoover, 30, said as the pair took a break from painting on Wednesday morning.
For more...

PAWHUSKA — It’s mating season on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, and the boys are showing off for the girls.
A bull bison wallows in the dirt. Another kicks at the sod. From the rear of the herd trots more beefcake, and two more males lock horns in a dust-up that lasts several minutes.
A window of his pickup...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said the U.S. government can't keep funding highway and transit projects "by the seat of our pants." Obama's comments came as he signed a three-month bill to keep transportation money flowing to states. The patch is the 34th short-term transportation measure since 2009. ...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — In the endless feedback loop of social media’s shaming machine, Walter Palmer never existed as a real person.
As soon as word got out that the Minnesota dentist had shot and killed an African lion so beloved it had a Disneyfied name — Cecil — the basic bio of Palmer’s digital avatar was...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House left town on Wednesday for a summer break that will last until Sept. 8. When lawmakers return, they’ll face important budget deadlines and commence debate on the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.
Budget negotiations with the White House were already expected to be difficult. But they...

HONOLULU — Seven men have been arrested for camping on Mauna Kea, where there’s a new emergency rule restricting overnight access to the mountain because of protests against building a giant telescope there.
The arrests early Friday are the first enforcement efforts since the land board approved the rule July 10....

MAHWAH, N.J. — One of two men suspected of making off with a bag containing $150,000 in cash that was mistakenly left behind by ATM workers bought an SUV with the money hours later, police said.
Alton Harvey, 42, of Hillside, was arrested Wednesday after police traced a white van that was captured on surveillance...

DALLAS — The Texas trooper who arrested Sandra Bland after a confrontation that began with a traffic stop was once cautioned about “unprofessional conduct” in a 2014 incident while he was still a probationary trooper, according to documents released Friday.
Bland, a 28-year-old Chicago-area woman, was found...

ST. LOUIS — The U.S. Department of Justice released a report critical of the St. Louis County Family Court on Friday, finding that black youths are treated more harshly than whites, and juveniles are often deprived of constitutional rights. Unrelated to the department's investigation in Ferguson, the new...

WASHINGTON — Kansas plans to keep a controversial $25 limit on ATM withdrawals by welfare recipients, despite the possibility that the restriction might violate federal law.
Legislation was passed earlier this year to raise the limit, or do away with it entirely, but a newly revised version of Kansas’ welfare...

BRITAIN-SMALL PLANE CRASH: Three relatives of the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden are among four people killed when a private jet crashes in southern England.
ITALY-SNOOP DOGG: Rapper Snoop Dogg is stopped by Italian customs for carrying too much cash — about $422,000.
FIAT CHRYSLER-HACKING:...

ZIMBABWE | HARARE — Zimbabwe has suspended the hunting of lions, leopards and elephants in an area where a lion popular with tourists was killed, the country's wildlife authority said Saturday.
In addition, bow and arrow hunts have been suspended unless they are approved by the head of the director of the...

ROBOT
PENNSYLVANIA | PHILADELPHIA — A hitchhiking robot that captured the hearts of fans worldwide met its demise in the U.S. The Canadian researchers who created hitchBOT as a social experiment say someone in Philadelphia damaged the robot beyond repair Saturday, ending its brief American tour. The robot was...

The Oklahoman is the state's largest newspaper and its most trusted news source. Oklahoman.com is a resource exclusively for our print and digital subscribers: all the day’s articles, streamlined for touch-screen tablets and desktop computers. If you have any questions about accessing Oklahoman.com, please call the number below or use the Help links at right.